Monday, September 24, 2012

Pot Holders & Grandchildren

I was blog hopping in the early summer and found "Doodling In My Mind".  She had a tutorial on making fun fabric art with her grandchildren.  Sharpie permanent markers are the pens that she used so when my daughter came out this summer from Wisconsin I had the kids sit up and design their own pot holders with this method. 

They had a blast and so did a couple of mothers. 








These are the mother's pot holders.






I quilted and put the binding on for them after they went back to Wisconsin.  I will be mailing them out today. I hope they like their artwork.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Grandma's Last Double Wedding Ring Quilt and Mine

I want to talk about my Grandmother's double wedding ring quilts.  She made several of these totally scrappy quilts.  She made one each for her 4 daughters and also some for grandchildren for wedding gifts.  I am the lucky person that got the last one she made. 



Grandma was a totally scrappy girl, she didn't know any other way to quilt.  When Mom would sew for her three girls she would give the left overs to Grandma and many other people did the same so everything she made was scrappy.  When she needed to buy background for the double wedding ring quilts she would buy what the 5 and 10 had on sale.  Needless to say, many of her quilts have not stood the test of time. 



My own wedding quilt fell to pieces many years ago.  I have been married 40 years this past April so I was very happy when I got her last one.,  It is made just like all the other ones she made and so I do not let anyone use the quilt because I do not want it to fall apart.



I have wanted to make my own double wedding ring for several years now. I bought some templates a few years ago and was going to make one from them but never did because the method seemed difficult.  2 years ago I bought the Quiltsmart version of the double wedding ring quilt and have now completed a queen size top.  I have it on the HQ Sixteen to quilt and started the custom quilting on it this week. I am trying to do a row every night after work and other duties.  It is taking quite a bit of time because of the way I am quilting it but I think I will be happy with it when I get done. So I just keep plodding along with it.





I haven't decided what fabric I will use for the binding yet.  I may use the same as the backing or I may make it scrappy. I will show better photos after I get this quilted and the binding on.

I love Scrappy!


Sunday, September 16, 2012

Grandma and Me

This is about a quilt that was started by my Grandmother sometime in the 1960's as best as I can figure out.


My Grandmother had completed several blocks and for whatever reason my Mother ended up with the blocks.


Whem my mother gave me the blocks she told me she had done a couple of blocks but she didn't really like quilting and so in 1976 she gave the blocks to me.  I then made some blocks.






I finished the quilt top in 1998 and quilted it in 2007.



I purchased my HQ Sixteen long arm quilting machine in April of 2007.  This quilt was the second quilt I completed on the HQ Sixteen.  I had no idea what I was doing but I felt like this quilt needed to be done.


I love it for the history it represents and the part I was able to play in it.  It is not a good example of my quilting ability at this point but I love it anyway.

Cindy N.


Friday, September 14, 2012

Time-Wish I had more of it

Hi Everyone out there,
I have wanted to work on this blog and learn new things all week but with my full time job and a long commute I find I don't have as much time as I would like to work on this blog.

I am not sure where I want to start but I have been thinking about starting from the beginning and show the quilt I made in 2000 for my daughter for her wedding gift.  I didn't actually finish it until just after the wedding because I hand quilted it.  I made it from all the fabric that was left over from making her clothes all her life.  She is going to take some new pictures and send them to me because I don't have any digital pics of it.  I made this from the Quilt in a Day Pioneer Sampler by Eleanor Burns.  This is the first quilt book I ever  purchased.  I purchased it to help me learn how to quilt and it also reminded me of my grandmother's quilting. My grandmother made scrappy quilts for all of her grandchildren and I became very intriqued with the beautiful quilts she made. So I picked this quilting book because of her.

I chose 12 different blocks from the book and made two blocks of each one. One block has fabric from my daughter's clothes and the other one has old left over fabric from anything else I sewed at the time.


I really struggled with matching points and corners and also I wasn't too good with putting fabrics together to have a good contrast.

I did hand quilt this but I stopped hand quillting when the grandbabies were coming so fast that I was scrabbling to get them done.  We have 20 grandchildren now and a new one is coming in January.



This quilt has allot of white and it certainly makes the blocks pop out but I am not so sure I would make it with so much white now.  I guess our tastes change over time.

Jenny sent me some pics of the back but because the fabric is so busy it is hard to see the quilting.


Maybe you can click on the picture and see the quilting better.  She says I quilted around the pattern in each block but not in the sashing or corner stones.  I still have some small bits and pieces of some of the fabrics from this quilt in my stash today.

This post is getting a little long so I will sign off for now but I will try to be a bit better and post more often.

Thanks for coming to visit.

Cindy N.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Trying to place a picture in a post

Well, I have turned off the annoying word verifications on this site.  This was a suggestion made in post today by Connie at Quilting by the River.  I don't know why I didn't think of it myself because I have been discouraged from leaving comments on other's websites for this very reason.  Oh, I just remembered I need to be on my laptop. Here I go.

Today I will try to post a picture.  Wish me luck.

I am so excited I finally was able to post a picture.
This is a charity quilt that my grand daughter Lizzy made,  She has made allot of progress over the years and felt real good about this little baby quilt.  Way to go Lizzy!





Friday, September 7, 2012

A Header Picture

Well, I figured out that I cannot set this whole thing up on my iPad so I have switched to my laptop.  Now I have a header picture.  It is too big but I am sure I will learn how to resize it to fit better on my Blog.  At least for now I have progressed.
I was able to get some help from Connie from Quilting by the River. She sure knows how to work with Blogger.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Just learning

I am just learning how to do blogger.  I can't seem to figure out how to upload pictures.
This may take me awhile to do this simple task.
Any suggestions to help me out?